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Sunday, August 13, 2006

Marching For Hezbollah In DC

It's been nearly a year since the last big anti-war march here in DC, mostly due to infighting between the lefty moonbat groups, so it was not exactly unexpected that one would pop up during the prime protesting months of the summer. The National Emergency March on Washington on Saturday, August 12, protested the current war between Hezbollah and Israel in Lebanon, featuring Ramsey Clark, the Stalinists of ANSWER, and a cast of thousands of radical Muslims.

America was to blame, of course, and specifically President Bush. Why? Why not? In the parallel universe of the lefties where black is white and up is down all blame for everything everywhere swirls down to Bush, Bush, Bush. As ANSWER explains it:

So all you silly people reading the newspaper and watching the news on TV who think that the cause of this war was Iran passing arms through Syria to Hezbollah along with one hundred million bucks to make war on Israel, well, now you've been set straight by ANSWER. American was to blame by providing Israel with arms to defend itself.

ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) is the organizational genius behind all the major anti-war marches in Washington, DC and other major cities. The major lefty radical groups are too disorganized to get the permits, rent the port-a-potties and generators, mass-produce signs, and make the march run on time. So they defer to ANSWER, which has big protests down to a science. When you go to an ANSWER demonstration, you'll see lots of professionally made signs laid out for protestors to tote. At other lefty demonstrations, the signs are all hand-made and off-message. ANSWER wants you to carry its message, not yours.

ANSWER's strategy is to partner with other lefty groups, dominate that partnership, and flesh out their protest with the junior partners' bodies. Their high-handed, Stalinist approach has led to a fallling out with the other lefty moonbat groups which dried up the big protests over the last year.

Pitching big demonstrations is expensive and ANSWER refuses to identify its sponsors, which appear to have deep pockets. Evidently, they have established a daycare center in New York City to which anybody, like countries, can donate money which is then funnelled to their anti-American demonstrations. Their daycare center is their laundry. It appears that Iraq funded them in their early years. Now they probably get their money from North Korea. Brian Becker, the director of ANSWER, has visited North Korea to extoll its dictator, Our Dear Leader Comrade Kim Jong Il, and praise the worker's paradise there.

ANSWER is spawned by the Worker's World Party, which is spawned by the Communist movement in the US, particularly in New York City.

The police sat on their horses off to the side of Lafayette Park. They stayed out of the demonstation itself. Evidently, they didn't consider the protest likely to get out of hand. Usually, the protests can't get a permit for Lafayette Park, which is barricaded off. They only had a waist high fence down the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue to keep the crowds away from the White House. The cops look bored, unaware that they were the forces of oppression in a fascist Amerikkka that was oppressing everyone, all the time, everywhere.

There were the usually peace pinheads all too willing to blame everything bad in the world on America. If somebody is poor in Paraguay, homeless in Hungary, or has an empty belly in Botswana, this guy thinks America is to blame.

Some Freepers counter-protested in front of the White House in what they described as a "peaceful, but contentious" confrontation. After about half an hour it got too contentious for the Secret Service police, who shooed them away.

I caught up with the departing Freepers on the far side of the Treasury building, where they displayed their signs. Anyone can see these are Very Dangerous People with Very Dangerous Ideas. Like the Right to Free Speech. Or that human shield idea. It makes you wonder why all those wacked out lefties who flocked to Iraq to be human shields don't sprint to Israel to be human shields against Hezbollah's rockets.

This guy pressed a sheaf of papers in my hand and drove off. They were various letters and petitions he had sent to government agencies, bureaucrats, and congressmen. His papers claim he was in the Army a couple years and was discharged as 100% disabled. A few years later, the VA sent him a letter informing him he was dead and to return any remaining benefits checks. He complains, rather reasonably in my view, that he is still alive. Apparently, he is having a hard time convincing the government of that. He was also at odds with the VA, claiming that they would not treat him but also refusing to be treated in a VA hospital.

As Lenin said, a lie told often enough becomes the truth. Here, a little street theater hopes to move the lie along. Just for the record, WMDs were found in Iraq along with a rather large foreign terrorist training program, equivalent in size to one of our military academies.

If only the true lies of Hezbollah, Saddam, and Al Qaeda attracted the outrage that these manufactured accusations against Bush do.

If you wanted to know where to get the latest copy of "Proletarian Revolution", here it is. These will tell you all about how Bush attacked the citizens of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in an example of racist capitalism's perfect storm.

He said he was the Reverend Werner Lang from Ohio and he was outraged, OUTRAGED, at the injustice in Qana. That's where Jesus turned water into wine, thundered the good reverend, and where the IDF turned children into corpses.

Reverend Lang displayed a curious lack of outrage for the forty rockets Hezbollah launched from Qana which presumably had the intent of turning Israeli civilians into corpses.

Meanwhile, Japanese tourists were delighted to have souvenir snapshots made with A Real American Radical, in this case the crazy lady who camps out in the No Nukes hut that has sat in front of the White House for years.

There were also some bewildered Brazilian tourists caught up in the crowd.

How many fascist dictatorships allow you to buy a bumper sticker like this in front of the house of the chief of state, let alone display it on your car as you drive all over town? Do you think Hezbollah would allow the sale of this sticker in its quarter of Lebanon? Would Arafat have allowed such criticism in Palestine? Assad in Syria or the mad mullahs of Iran, would they allow such an insult? Would Saddam Hussein?

The irony of displaying a bumper sticker claiming your country is fascist is that you can only do so if it isn't fascist, or even close.

If true, wouldn't these supposed terrorists in the White House look out the window, notice this sign, and apply some terror to this protestor? For a terrorist state, it's kinduva big screwup to overlook this guy, dontcha think? He only dares display this slander because he is confident he will never be a victim of terror for insulting the US government. In Saddam's Iraq, ordinary people bearing no signs accusing the government of terrorism at all were afraid to even drive by the buildings housing Saddam's police. That's how it works in a real terrorist state. If the medium is the message, this sign refutes itself.

The International Action Center, which made this sign, is part of ANSWER. It's a little fuzzy for me what war crimes it thinks Bush did in New Orleans but why let the truth get in the way of a little radical rhetoric? Perhaps this is carrying forward the argument of ANSWER pet Cindy Sheehan and her criticism of "occupied New Orleans" after Hurricane Katrina blew through and the US military was deployed there, a scary example of "military and governmental fascism gone out of control."

Here's how the arc of Arab Muslim argument goes: Hezbollah fires rockets at Israel from Qana, hiding behind civilians, using them like so many sandbags. Israel fires back, taking out the rocket launchers, but killing and wounding civilians nearby. Therefore, Israel is the aggressor and indifferent to the lives of civilians, not the Hezbollah guys hiding their rockets in civilian basements. Since Israel uses US weapons, then the US is to blame, not Iran which supplies the rockets to Hezbollah.

The festivities were begun by Peta Lindsay of ANSWER, the usual mistress of ceremonies at big protests here, who is incongruously perky at the podium, like an activities director on a cruise ship headed to the dictatorship of the proletariat. She's about 21, Howard University student, probably a red-diaper baby.

They had warmed the crowd up with about five minutes of chants: "Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, Occupation is a crime!" The crowd took to it with gusto. When Peta stepped up, the crowd drowned her out with furious chants of "ALLAH AKBAR! ALLAH AKBAR! ALLAH AKBAR!"

Peta lost no time blaming America for the war in Lebanon. All the bombs and weapons for the war came from the US, she said, omitting those 13,000 Katyusha rockets et al from Iran. She claimed that 200,000 Iraqis had died from US imperialism, which is twice the wackiest estimate of the Lancet, since debunked. ANSWER has a history of inflating numbers. She finished claiming that America's war for empire only benefits Exxon and other transnational corporations. So evidently, Exxon started the war in Lebanon by firing rockets into Israel. It was kind of hard to follow how Exxon began this shooting war, but everyone applauded so it must be true.

That set another theme of this demonstration: blameshifting. Everyone was to blame for this war but Hezbollah: Israel, America, Bush, Exxon, transnational corporations, you name it. If it had an American connection, it was guilty somehow.

The audience for the speakers appeared to me to be mostly Middle Eastern, foreign and domestic. There was a lot of Arabic-accented English floating around the crowd, a lot of women in hijab, some boisterous guys who looked like Muslim punks. However, the crowd was not personally nasty like the typical lefty crowd who are prone to shout abuse in your face. These people were very polite personally, despite the public expression of radical rhetoric.

What I didn't expect to see at a Muslim demonstration castigating Israel was a bunch of Jews joining in. They were orthodox Jews in big ass furry hats from the Neturei Karta International who oppose Zionism and the state of Israel. They believe that Jews should remain in a state of exile and that Israel should be dismantled.

They may be contrarians by nature because wearing fur hats on a 90+ degree summer day flies in the face of nature.

It's never too early to teach your kids that Bush is to blame for everything, like this dufus carrying this sign: "President Bush: Stop the Killing of Innocent Children" provided by the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).

Hezbollah launched five hundred Katyusha rockets into Israel in the five months before Israel responded, but Bush is to blame.

Every so once in a while, the truth spilled out. It wasn't about Israel fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon. It was about Israel existing at all.

A couple times while I was circulating through the crowd I heard guys spout off, only to be shushed by their friends. One guy next to me started shouting, "DOWN WITH THE US MILITARY!" His friend grabbed his arm and told him not to say that. They were editing themselves to appeal to an American audience.

There are a lot of Germans and Japanese whom America forced into democracy after WWII who seem to be faring well in their hypocritical regimes. Likewise, India and South Korea were forced into democracy. Economic success is a feature shared by all these countries.

The signs at this largely Muslim rally were not vulgar like the signs at the usual lefty protest fest. This was the exception.

Meanwhile, in the background, a guy with a heavy Arab accent is haranging the crowd about how America is to blame by sending smart bombs and cluster bombs "to kill our children." On he thundered about refusing to live in "a virtual concentration camp of fear." "ALLAH AKBAR!" roared the crowd.

Again, they have no problem with Hezbollah sending dumb rockets to kill Israeli children. What if Iran supplied smart bombs and cluster bombs to Hezbollah? Do you think there is any chance they would not use them? Smart bombs and cluster bombs were another theme of the protest, heard over and over again. The more I heard it, the less I believe it was a complaint, the more I believed it was an expression of envy that they did not have these weapons.

Ramsey Clark, Democrat, former Attorney General under LBJ, took some time off from acting as defense attorney for Saddam Hussein to repeat all the standard lefty talking points to the attentive crowd. After he left the podium, the Arab media were all over him like flies on a cow patty.

It's hard to believe that a former official of the US government can be such a traitor to America and humanity. He's defended Nazi war criminals, Lyndon Larouche, a genocidal maniac from Rwanda, the PLO leaders who had wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer executed on the Achille Lauro, and Slobodon Milosevic, among other evil dirtbags. He helped found ANSWER. Where ever evil opposes America, he's on evil's side.

This is the only blonde babe I saw there. Nice earrings. She was wearing a sequined peace sign. There was a sprinkling of middle-age white lefties, but for the most part the regular lefty masses were missing in action.

Is Hezbollah a corporation? Syria? Iran? More blameshifting from Hezbollah to capitalism, of all things. Islamic imperialism started this war, not corporation, not capitalism, not Bush, not the Easter bunny.

Hyuk Kyo Suh, representative from "Korean Americans Against War & Liberalization," complained from the podium that the US is threatening a new war against North Korea. "Peace in the Middle East and North Korea!" he shouted. "US out of Middle East and Korea!"

So what does Korea have to do with the Middle East? Nothing. However, ANSWER has to show something to Kim Jong Il to justify bankrolling them. And you can never have too many speakers castigating America. Of course, it goes without saying he turns the truth on its head by painting the US as the belligerent party in Korea, where North Korea refuses to agree to an end to the Korean War half a century after major hostilities ceased.

Or in the parlance of the Islamists, the Great Satan and the Little Satan are the same.

Dr. Esam Omesh, President of the Muslim American Society, took the microphone to demand the US end its "mass military aid" to Israel. Oddly enough, he did not demand Iran end its mass military aid to Hezbollah. He was furious about Bush's condemnation of the British Muslims recently caught attempting to bomb airliners inflight as a reminder that we are still "at war with Islamic fascists." Omesh roared with rage, "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ISLAMIC FASCISM!" The crowd roared back, "ALLAH AKBAR!"

If I had a bullshit flag, I would have thrown it right there and blown the bullshit whistle to boot. The Islamists who form a violent portion of Muslims, who want to conquer the world with terror to establish the Caliphate, a worldwide Islamic empire where Muslims rule and non-Muslims have no rights, smell like fascists to me.

The strong objection of Muslims to this term spring from two sources, in my opinion. The first is loss of face. The cultural aversion to losing face is so strong that Muslims will object to anything that causes it, no matter how accurate or fair. The second is the kneejerk Muslim reaction to any negative remark about Islam. Anything Muslim is good because it's Muslim while anything bad can not be Muslim. Muslims have little facility for self-criticism and no tolerance for external criticism. Might I also note for a group so hypersensitive to receiving criticism, they felt little restraint in freely dishing out criticism of America.

I'd have more respect for Muslims if they criticized Muslim terrorists as much as they criticized President Bush. My gut feeling is that deep down they think that the Muslim terrorists are the good guys in this fight.

They ran a couple dozen speakers past the crowd, who sat still for it. It's hard to believe that there are thousands of people who have such an appetite for propaganda that they will sit still for two hours of demagoguery. Heck, I can bearly sit still for half an hour of a good speech by a conservative. I'd much rather cut to the chase and read it in the paper in fifteen minutes the next day. These folks just wore my ears out. I had to leave for a Diet Coke and a pretzel before I could muster up the interest in a second helping.

By that time, the hectoring was over and the crowd milled in front of the White House, ready to march.

Despite all the condemnation of capitalism and praise for socialism that suffused the rally, that didn't stop the wannabe revolutionaries from stopping at the ATM to load up on dirty American bourgeois dollars, courtesy of one of those nasty transnational corporations waging war on Lebanon.

By the way, that's a Hezbollah flag she's holding. Anyone wearing yellow in this protest-a-rama is supporting Hezbollah.

The march had hardly started before it hit its first counterprotestors, these pinhead Christians toting the sign, "Mohammed was a false prophet". I heard him before I saw him preaching through a bullhorn, "The Prophet Mohammed is in hell where he belongs."

The Muslims on the march did not receive this counter-protest happily. "RACIST! RACIST!" they cried. It didn't exactly make sense, because Islam is a religion not a race. The Christians were bigots, not racists, but the Muslims know how to push the buttons of Americans. No American wants to be called a racist.

They followed up with chants of "ALLAH AKBAR! ALLAH AKBAR! ALLAH AKBAR!" Then the chant changed to "Cowards! Cowards!" and then to "Hezbollah!" The sergeant on the scene decided his single line of cops was not enough and had his motorcycle cops pull up to form a second line to block the mob. "And how's your day, officer?" I asked one motorcycle cop. He just laughed.

This furious Muslim chick (see photo) burst out of the crowd next to me to scream at the Bible waver, "FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!"

This guy wanted to get into it with the Mohammed-bashers, but kept his head enough to realize the cops would arrest him long before he could get a piece of Bible Man. There were a fair number of guys like this in the crowd, who appeared to me to be the Muslim equivalent of the Bloods or Crips, with the Palestinian cloth their gang colors.

The Muslim reaction to their religion being insulted struck me as different than a Christian reaction. A Christian would probably shrug it off and tell the insulters that s/he would pray for them. The Muslims don't think that way. They're no pacifists. As Churchill said, Islam is a fighting faith.